Meet Sam Akpro, the south Londoner with a brilliantly restless sound

Young musicians and fans in the 2020s are pre-programmed to listen to and appreciate music from across the genre spectrum without thinking. ‘Genre-less’ has become a somewhat overused catch-all term in recent times, but few embody it better than south London songwriter Sam Akpro.

His debut album Evenfall, released on US punk label ANTI-, marries punk, pop, psych, rap and more, all tied together by his distinctive voice and energy.

In a nonchalant explanation of his boundary-breaking sound, Akpro simply tells us: “You hear something grunge and then you hear some rap. Then, when you’re trying to make music, you’re like, ‘Well, I really like both these things’.” It really shouldn’t be more complicated than that.

Watch the video for new single ‘Tunnel Vision’ and read our interview with Akpro – about the journey to his debut album, getting his musical education on the internet and prioritising leaving space in his music – below.

You waited five years to release your debut album – do you think this was the perfect time to share a bigger body of work?

This is the perfect time. I started releasing in 2019, and then there was the lockdown. There was just a big gap of two years of my life where I didn’t really write anything – there wasn’t a headspace to create anything. Now, I feel the most confident writing music, playing the music live, and doing everything justice now. If I’d done an album two years ago, I wasn’t very mature yet.

What do you put this new, greater maturity down to?

Just growing up, life changes, moving out of my parents’ house. I was trying to figure out what the vision was for my music career.

What did you land on regarding your overall vision?

I’m still not like entirely sure, but it’s to reflect on myself but also look outside and commentate on what’s going on outside around me and beyond myself. You can get caught up in thinking about yourself too much.

Your music touches so many different genres and styles – what were you listening to when you wrote Evenfall?

I was listening to a lot of ‘80s post-punk stuff, A. R. Kane,  Massive Attack, The Pop Group. I was listening to lots of hip-hop and rap, especially Q-Tip. I listened to a lot of that to learn about sampling elements, which I definitely added to the record. There’s a lot of collaging of my own stuff from recordings I did years ago.

How were you discovering music to gain such a broad taste? You grew up in Peckham, which is notorious for having such a wide range of musical styles and cultures.

There’s just too much music for you to listen to just one thing. You can find any kind of music you want in the world, listening on streaming or YouTube. That’s where I found music. I didn’t find it in a subculture, though I guess the Internet has its own subculture – the internet is the world. It’s everything, whether that’s good or bad. That shines through in the way people write and create music. Even if you don’t think about it, you hear something grunge and then you hear some rap. Then, when you’re trying to make music, you’re like, ‘Well, I really like both these things’, and it just flows through and then creates something.

Has there been a change in your songwriting or creative process that you think defines the songs on the album?

There’s a lot of gaps and space in the songs. When I wrote ‘I Can’t See the Sun’, it was only three or four elements, and I was like, ‘Wow, I’ve never made anything like this’. The things I wrote prior were more out of naivety and experimentation. That still was, but it feels like a defined version of what those things were.

Leaving space in songs is often the scariest thing, because it can expose if the songwriting is lacking…

That’s what I’m trying to get away from – filling things with too much stuff. You’re hiding the mediocrity in all the loud sounds. On the album, we were layering a lot of things and then we stripped things back and it just made it 100 times better. The things you’re listening for and want to hear already there – you just gotta remove things.